


Madness and Stabbing Pain

by TerrusDacktellus



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, Scoobies - Freeform, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-14
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-15 00:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8035774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerrusDacktellus/pseuds/TerrusDacktellus
Summary: The Scoobies are fussing, Spike's distant and weird and her house is crammed with Potentials. Really, a stab wound is the least of Buffy's worries.





	Madness and Stabbing Pain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cori_the_bloody](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cori_the_bloody/gifts).



> For an awesome friend and excellent writer, corithebloody's birthday, based on these two prompts:  
> “Luckily she had experience being stabbed” and “Imagine Person A impulsively/unknowingly touching Person B’s hand to hold it, then realizing what they’re doing and stopping themselves because they think someone saw them. Person A awkwardly tries to avoid looking at Person B, but they notice that Person B quickly and sadly glances at Person A’s hand for just a moment.“

The pain in her side was searing, flaring strongly with every breath as Buffy forced herself to walk steadily home. She kept one hand clamped tightly over the wound and gripped her stake with the other, still on the alert this close to home. Sunnydale was even less safe than usual these days.

In her head, she rehearsed what she would say when she got in. Something light and breezy was what the situation called for, she felt. Something like, ‘hey guys, patrol was fine, just got a little stabbed. How’re you?’ Or maybe she should lead with the stabbing, explain things before they could jump down her throat with anxious questions. ‘Look, some ugly vamp mook got a shot at me with my own stake, no big, could happen to anyone. Can I get some of those pop tarts?’

“Yeah, great idea,” she muttered aloud. “That’ll convince everyone.”

She turned onto Revello Drive at last and heaved a sigh of relief that made her instantly wince and clutch her stomach in pain. No deep breaths with the major stab wounds, come on, Buffy. Mumbling swear words she would have yelled at Dawn for using, she limped across her lawn and paused a minute before going inside. No matter how she played it, she knew, this was the end of solitary patrols, the last bastion of Buffy time, finito. They’d insist on accompanying her now, Willow or Xander or Giles, watching her back, or more likely, presenting a giant distraction. She bit her lip, angry with herself for the mean-spirited thought. They had her best interests at heart, she knew they did. It was just - they still didn’t get it. After all these years, they still didn’t quite get what being the Slayer meant.

She reached for the door but it opened under her hand and she found herself face to face with Spike. He looked as surprised to see her as she was to see him and he started backwards with a half-hearted oath.

“Slayer, you’re back early,” he began in that trivial, small talk tone he’d begun to adopt around her, then stopped, his face changing. The shadow of something dangerous flickered briefly behind his eyes, there and gone again, and his nostrils flared.

“You’re hurt,” he said quietly, stepping out of the doorway so she could get in. She wavered, groped for support and found the wall, while he hovered beside her, hands half raised as though he’d reached for her and thought better of it.

“I’ll get Willow.” He vanished into the kitchen, leaving Buffy to fend for herself.

Predictably, the Scoobies made a fuss. Buffy found herself perched on the kitchen table holding her shirt up so Willow could clean up and bandage the jagged gash in her side while Giles lectured her, interrupted occasionally by an anxious comment from Xander or Dawn. The overflow of care and attention was so endearing that the slight air of condescension hardly rankled. A few of the potentials lingered by the door, trying to peek in and had to be chased back to bed.

“Really, Buffy, it was very reckless of you to go out by yourself, at a time like this,” Giles was saying sternly. He was at his most British, all propriety and ruffled feathers and Buffy felt like she was sixteen again, being told off by a stuffy librarian in a stuffy library. She glanced around hoping to share the joke but when she caught Xander’s eye he was frowning and nodding along with Giles’ speech and Spike had his back to her, standing at the sink with his shoulders hunched.

“You have to be responsible for more than just yourself now,” Giles went on, warming up as he got onto his new favourite topic. “A good leader does not take unnecessary risks! A good leader does not -”

“Ow! Shit!” Buffy yelped as Willow did something that set her whole side on fire. She looked down to find her friend smiling at her sheepishly.

“Sorry,” she said, holding up a bottle of some witchy concoction she was using as a disinfectant. “Um, this might sting?”

The fiery burning eased a little, then intensified as Willow dabbed more awful stingy stuff into the open wound, murmuring apologies as Buffy clenched her jaw and hissed between her teeth. Giles kept on endlessly in the same vein, to the extent that it began to feel like a deliberate effort to distract her from her discomfort. Not that she didn’t appreciate it, but she would have preferred an approach that involved more candy and less haranguing. As she blinked away tears of pain, she sensed rather than saw Spike drawing closer to her, then felt a cold touch on her hand. She looked quickly towards him, but he was already pulling away, determinedly avoiding her eyes. She couldn’t help glancing at his hand, clenched into a fist but still slightly extended towards her, and felt a lump in her throat that had nothing to do with the antiseptic in her stab wound. She’d known those hands in what felt like a hundred moods, known them gentle, known them violent, ecstatic, teasing, hungry but at the same time, she was glad he’d pulled away. She didn’t want him touching her (even if, perversely, she wanted to touch him) because it was all too painful and too complicated. Suddenly, the stinging wound seemed like a welcome distraction.


End file.
